Ins, outs, and elsewheres

Via Matt, I see that John Courage is officially running for the CD21 seat currently held by Lamar "Lapdog" Smith. I am aware of rumors of other candidates, but for now, at least we know the Democrats will have a good person on the ballot.

Meanwhile, Max Sandlin's former campaign manager left the following comment on this BOR post about where he might run in 2006:

It is highly likely that Max Sandlin will be on the 2006 ballot. However, he will not be a candidate for State Senate.

Max believes there are numerous excellent Democratic possibilities for each district including Jim McReynolds, Chuck Hopson and Mike Head in the 3rd and Tom Ramsay as well as Paul Sadler in the 1st -- just to name a few.

Personally, Max will continue to gauge the potential of a statewide race and he would certainly consider another run for Congress should the Supreme Court restore some sanity to the Texas redistricting process.

In any case he is certainly not through with public service or Texas politics and will continue to be a forceful advocate for Democratic candidates.

He asked me to thank all of you for your kind thoughts and inspired analysis.

If you're thinking statewide, Max, we could use someone in the Lt. Gov. slot. Just something to consider.

Elsewhere, there are names and rumors flying about all over the place. Here's the Democratic lineup so far as I know it. Feel free to make additions or corrections in the comments.

At the statewide level, we have two confirmed candidates (Radnofsky for Senate, Van Os for AG) and one all-but-confirmed (Chris Bell for Guv). Various others, including Max Sandlin as noted above, may or may not be looking at this race or that, though it's pretty much all the top tier races that get the buzz. I've heard nothing about any Supreme Court or Court of Criminal Appeals canidates, and other than a nascent grassroots effort to draft Charlie Stenholm for Ag Commish, nada on the Commissioner seats.

For Congress, we have a few entries.

- CD10: According to an email from Carl Whitmarsh, the Cy-Fair Area Democratic Club has a meeting on July 7 for which one of the speakers will be "Ted Ankrum, a local resident who is considering a possible candidacy for U.S. Congressional District 10". That's the first I've heard of anything here.

- CD14: I'd been hearing about a challenge here. The Quorum Report has a blurb that says "Independent Cattlemens Association Executive Director Shane Sklar is taking a serious look in the race."

- CD21: John Courage for sure, possibly others.

- CD22: Nick Lampson for sure, with Gordon Quan still contemplating.

- CD31: Mary Beth Harrell, an attorney from Killeen, is supposedly in.

It's unclear yet whether State Rep. Richard Raymond will take a crack at CD23, though I do feel confident that someone will run.

Not too shabby so far. We still need challengers in (at least) CD02, CD07, and CD32, but this is a good start.

Bupkis so far in the State Senate. SD17 is sure to draw someone, and SD03 is going to be open, but that's all I know at this time. Quite the opposite in the State House, where there's already a swarm of potential and committed challengers. I've already talked about many of them - you can browse the Election 2006 archive to see who I've mentioned up till now. Again, I think this is a great start, and I know there will be more.

So who am I missing?

UPDATE: Well, for one, there's Kevin Anderson in CD04.

To clarify: My intent here was to focus on Dem challengers to GOP incumbents, so I skipped CD28, which may or may not have State Rep. Raymond, former US Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, or both in a contested primary against Rep. Henry Cuellar. Obviously, I will have an interest in that race if it happens.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on June 14, 2005 to Election 2006 | TrackBack